Leaving Shanghai and going to Burma

We are sitting on the plane having just finished a delicious brunch of dim sum, with arrival in Hong Kong only 45 minutes away. Here are a few random thoughts on Shanghai before switching gears to Burma.

Courtesy of dear friend Bob Rothstein, self-described ancient merchant mariner: Shanghaied is a nautical term. Ship’s in Shanghai’s harbor were always short on crew, so they sent out officers to “recruit” new sailors. The officers would cruise the bars and opium dens and when a guy was sufficiently “out” he was brought on the ship. By the time the guy was sufficiently sober, the vessel was on high sea and voila he became a sailor! He was in fact, “Shanghaied.”
Thank you Bob!

The Chinese language never fails to astound me. Since there is no similarity between Chinese and English, one is completely dependent on translations or helpful bi-linguals to get along. All the hotels have cards that say in English and Chinese, “Please take me to XYZ Hotel” with address and phone number. You then protect this card at all costs because to lose it would mean you would not get back to your hotel unless you were rescued by some other kind bi-lingual. You can’t just say “Mansion Hotel” because they wouldn’t understand the name in English. The taxi drivers not only speak no English, they don’t speak at all--not a single one of our drivers uttered so much as one word, to my memory. They would look at the card and drive, stop at the destination, take the money which is registered on the meter, and leave, sometimes with a small bow, sometimes not. Cabs are plentiful and cheap though and we never had to wait for even a minute before hailing one. We would ask Emilio or another bi-lingual at our hotel to write in Chinese where we were going--Yu Garden, People’s Square, etc--and if that wasn’t practical we would point to the destination on the map and hope for the best. It is also amazing to watch them write in Chinese is another amazing thing. So many intricate lines and squiggles! If I were 30 or 40 years younger I would study Mandarin Chinese if for no other reason than to unlock its mysteries.

People watching is a favorite pastime for Tom and I. Among the hordes of people of course there are many children. Everywhere we noticed that children were being cared for by grandparents, and rarely by parents or nannies. The parents are no doubt both working, and nannies are not only too expensive, but it would be considered unseemly to allow strangers to watch the kids. Usually the families all live together, children, parents and grandparents, and built-in babysitters are a convenient by-product of that arrangement.

We also noticed that the elders are treated with great respect. In restaurants especially, when a family comes in, the elders are seated first, gently and with great care, their coats removed and put aside and care taken to make them comfortable. I noticed one family where the grandmother, who was in a wheelchair, had three younger families members hovering over her and seeing to her comfort throughout the meal.

Time to pack up and land!

Now we are sitting in the Bangkok airport waiting for our flight to Yangon, the third flight of the day. Tomorrow, we are joining a group of a mere eight people, including us, and I’m sure we will find them congenial. We received a list with their names and as far as I can tell there are two other married couples, a single lady and a single gentleman, all close to our age. I deduced this through my investigative powers which I will not go into here. This is the first group tour we have ever done, with the exception of my post-college trip to Europe which was of the thirty day “if it’s Tuesday it must be Belgium” variety.

And now it is Wednesday morning (Tuesday evening for all of you) and we have had our first full day in Yangon and another one will begin in just a few minutes. Monday night we were met at the airport by Nu Nu Htwe (pronounced Tway), who is our vivacious and capable guide--we were surprised that she herself met us and not some peon, but she said that was all part of her job.

The hotel is a sprawling teak complex, formerly the Governor’s Residence which is now the name of the hotel. The Governor (during the British occupation) must have lived pretty well. The grounds are lovely, although the rooms are a tad long in the tooth. The staff cannot do enough for you and I even had two private computer consultants yesterday who managed to install a program on my computer so that I can continue with these missives.

Our adventures yesterday warrant a whole new entry so I am going to try to post this new just to see if I can.

More of Shanghai

Not being able to read your own blog is kind of like talking but not being able to hear the words that come out of your mouth. But lest I make the situation out to be more dire than it actually is, I can see the blog, but only in its pre-published state. That is, although I can write it and edit it, I can’t see if it comes out the way I want it, and being an anal perfectionist, that makes me crazy! But again, we are so lucky to have it at all.


We are leaving early tomorrow for a long day of travel, happily one of only a few on this trip. We fly from Shanghai to Hong Kong, then to Bangkok, and then on to Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar (Burma) where we will spend a night at leisure before the tour begins the next day.


We are signed up for a 13 day tour of Myanmar, the new name for Burma. Burma, to me, conjures up old Bob Hope movies. Wasn’t there a Road to Burma movie, or maybe it was the Road to Mandalay. Of course the Road movies are before my time (ha), but somewhere I dimly remember Bob Hope and maybe Bing Crosby or Don Ameche or somebody bumbling their way through Rio or Burma or some other exotic place encountering head hunters or quicksand or evil sorcerers, but mostly enjoying beautiful native girls happily helping them out of their current mess with promises of untold pleasures ahead.


Tomorrow on the several plane rides, I hope to have enough battery to give you a few thoughts on the new Burma, which I suspect is nothing like the old Bob Hope version. But for now, we are still in Shanghai and I have given it short shrift.


Some thoughts on Shanghai: for one thing, it’s impossible to see a city of this magnitude in three days. We have been without benefit of guide, by choice, so therefore we probably have missed many of the highlights, or at least the explanation of them. I’ve been trying to find out the population of Shanghai and the various sites say anything from 13 to 20 million people. Suffice to say, there are A LOT of people. We are staying in a relatively quiet neighborhood, the French Concession as I’ve mentioned before, but as soon as you approach the more touristed areas, you are overwhelmed by the crowds and the teeming masses. They don’t seem to mind, though. It’s normal for them.


My general impression is that Shanghai is not as sophisticated as Beijing, although that could be totally off base and of course we are not privy to the seats of power. Last year in Beijing, we were astounded by the beautiful people, the fashion, the sheer size of the boulevards and the general air of excitement. Here, we see people of much more modest means, many blocks of run-down neighborhoods as we travel by taxi, and for sure, it is not nearly as clean. Last year, we couldn’t get over how clean Beijing was--people literally dusting the streets and very little trash or litter. Here, there is litter everywhere and while we see the requisite street cleaners, they don’t have the spring in their step that their Beijing counterparts had. Again, I may be totally off base, but that is my impression.


Last night we had dinner in our hotel. There is a restaurant on the top floor ( the fifth) run by a brand new chef from San Diego of all places. Our little buddy Emilio, the concierge (christened Emilio by his Spanish teacher but of course Chinese) was giving us a tour of the place the other day and took us up to meet Sean Jorgenson, a young American chef newly hired to transform the rooftop restaurant into a happening place, after having fallen out of favor in its previous incarnation as an Italian restaurant. The food now is nouvelle American--salmon tartar, mussels in coconut sauce, crab stuffed sole, etc.--and the place was packed with ex-pats and traveling business men (and women) who seek out the Mansion when in Shanghai. There was a Swedish couple who had adopted a beautiful Chinese baby, whom they named incongruously HILDA, but she was so adorable and the mum was chasing her all over the restaurant clearly not wanting to cramp her style by confining her. We struck up a conversation and the dad said that the Mansion was the best hotel in Shanghai and that he was pretty well connected to the ex-pat community which is impossible to understand unless you are part of it. At the restaurant there were at least two couples where the man was a Westerner (either Brit or American) with a MUCH younger Chinese woman and we had seen the same thing the night before at the French restaurant down the street where we had dinner. Clearly there is a whole world of foreign involvement in this very Chinese city.


We have spent much of our time walking--happily there is a lot to see that way, unlike Beijing where everything is so big you can’t begin to walk it. Today we went to People’s Square and the Shanghai Museum, a fantastic display of all the Chinese art you could want. There was a current exhibition of “Gu Embroidery” which I had never heard of, but being my hot button I was fascinated by the intricacy of the work. The stitches are so small they look like painting.


Then we walked down the boulevard surrounded by enormous buildings and millions of people toward the Sunday Ghost Market, called so because it starts so early only ghosts would be up. It was a little difficult to find, but once again, we stood there looking perplexed and pretty soon a Chinese couple came up and with no English simply pointed us in the right direction and there it was. Block after block of vendors selling every imaginable ware from watch to bag to sunglass to fake jade to silk scarf to you name it. There were very few big noses there although the vendors would seek us out and say ‘you want watch, bag, sunglass.” I would say “no watch, no bag, no sunglass” and they would good-naturedly retreat. It’s a scene, though, and maybe I’m getting jaded but there was not a single thing I was tempted to buy.


And with that I will close and see what happens when I try to post this. More tomorrow.

The Pearl of the Orient

Yu Garden - High Kitsch


Pearl Tower and Skyline of Bund

Some funny lines here...

Well, greetings from Shanghai. There have been no posts since we’ve been here because I haven’t been able to access the blog at all. I think it has something to do with the server at this hotel. I’m hoping I can post this even though I won’t be able to see it. It will therefore be brief.

We got out of Chicago by the skin of our teeth in the sense that there was snow and freezing weather and many backed-up flights, but our flight left almost on time and arrived fourteen hours later in Shanghai ON TIME!

The hotel is a renovated mansion built in the twenties for a famous mob boss. It fell into disrepair for many years and has only recently been restored to its former splendor. It has just thirty rooms and it’s filled with antiques and interesting memorabilia from the past like old cameras and typewriters (the lobby, that is, not the room).

We arrived around seven the first night after the long plane ride and another couple of hours getting through customs, collecting luggage and getting a taxi to the hotel. I have found from previous travels that if you stand there looking confused with a map in your hand, usually someone will offer to help. That’s what happened at the airport. A Chinese gentleman behind the Four Seasons counter asked if I needed help and I told him we were staying at the Mansion and would he write that down for me so we could give it to the taxi driver. He then proceeded to call the hotel (I had the number) and was told that our reservation was to begin tomorrow not tonight! I had changed the reservation two weeks previously when our flight was cancelled and we found out we had to leave a day earlier. I got on the phone, was told by the young lady that the hotel was completely booked (Valentine’s Day!). I then dropped the name of my new best friend Mr. Jin who had taken and then changed the reservation (the confirmation of which I was holding in my hand), she left, came back and informed me that there was in fact a room for us. Disaster averted once again.

As I write this, we have now spent two days exploring Shanghai with one more full day before we leave for Burma. Shanghai is interesting as all big cities are, but not nearly as exotic nor as charming as I thought it would be. Day one we went to Yu Garden, a highly recommended tourist site and a must see in Shanghai. The garden itself is surrounded by block after block of kitschy shops and thousands of red lanterns draped overhead, left over no doubt from Chinese New Year which was a couple of weeks ago. The Chinese celebrate the New Year for a month we hear, and Yu Garden was packed with Chinese tourists who appeared to be in from the provinces on vacation. We wanted to go to a dumpling restaurant there, but the crowds were so thick we abandoned the idea and found another place outside the confines of the garden. Just like last year, we were the object of quite a few stares--I wish I knew whether they were astounded by our beauty or appalled by our ugliness! Beauty of course is in the eye of the beholder.

We walked from there to the famous Bund, a promenade along the riverfront where the skyline that is so well known can be seen on the other side of the water. The Pearl TV Tower, a space ship of a building dominates the new Shanghai east of the river. West of the river, as one walks the Bund, there is block after block of Art Deco buildings, mostly banks today, which call to mind what the old Shanghai must have looked like in the twenties and thirties. Oddly enough, Shanghai as a city is not that old--before 1842 it was a quiet fishing village and only when it was designated a “treaty port” and thus open to foreign commerce did it begin to grow. At that time, the British, French and Americans each carved out an area of the city to establish their own identities. These areas were called Concessions and still exist today with separate characters, architectural styles and personalities, although they are no longer dominated by one nationality. Some of the buildings along the Bund are very beautiful and are designated architectural treasures, but many of them are dilapidated and in serious need of repair. The old Peace Hotel, which I had read about and couldn’t wait to see, was locked up tight and as we peered through the windows we could see that there was much work to be done to restore it. Other buildings were open though and had been preserved, although pictures are not allowed for some unfathomable reason. I have included a picture of the ominous warning signs that are prominently placed at the entry to these buildings. I tried to take a picture inside one of the more beautiful buildings (before noticing the signs) but was immediately pounced upon by tone of the ever-present guards.

I’m going to try to post this now if only to see if I can. More to come, I hope!

Let the Adventure begin! Please!

We are finally underway,--in the air that is--after a bit of a delay at the airport where first they told us that our flight to Chicago was canceled, and then, to add insult to injury, they told us that we were being “involuntarily downgraded” from first class to coach. If we were willing to fly coach there was another plane we could get on and if not, we could go home and wait until tomorrow. Not an option, we’ll fly coach, although I will demand a refund for that portion of our journey upon our return. Then, miracle of miracles, we were magically re-upgraded, and now we sit in first class on an earlier flight which has left later than the flight originally canceled if you can follow that. There is “weather” in Chicago.

I’ve been watching the weather in Chicago all week--lots of snow, thousands of flights cancelled, but please God, just get us there so that we can get on our flight to Shanghai sometime in the vicinity of 11:00 AM tomorrow. For tonight, we will slosh our way to the Sheraton, go to sleep and dream dreams of Chinese lanterns twinkling on dimly lit streets in the Old City, dumplings lighter than air served in garden restaurants near the Bund, and happy people in greenery laden parks performing ritual martial arts to keep fit and to preserve their culture. That last one may be a fantasy, however, because the weather in Shanghai, while not exactly Chicago-esque, will not be warm.

Shanghai has air of mystery about it, to my uninitiated eye. I picture deals being done in smoke filled cafes, shifty-eyed merchants trying to sell me all sorts of contraband in back alleys, skyscrapers that scream modernity juxtaposed with old town narrow streets and ancient buildings. Then there is the old term “Shanghaied” as in “He was shanghaied by (fill in the blank) in the prime of his life!“ I think that means something like kidnapped while under the influence, but I’m not entirely sure. I’ll look it up.

We are staying in an area called the French Concession, and until I read about it, I had no idea that such neighborhoods existed in a Chinese city. The way it has been described in my reading, I picture it as an area of tree-lined avenues with trendy shops, chic townhouses and fashionable restaurants--not Chinese at all! More like Buenos Aires, Paris or the brownstone lined avenues of New York. But we shall see and I will report my findings in future entries.

Our pilot has just informed us that we will be in a holding pattern for an hour or so before we can land because flights are backed up, and who knows what lays in store for the rest of the evening. But for now, I’m thrilled to be here and can’t wait for the days ahead to unfold. Love to all of you, my dearest family and friends.

Welcome Shane

As I relearn the mechanics of blog-making, allow me to indulge myself by showing you a picture of our newest grandchild, No. 13, a baker's dozen! He is Shane Maxson McQuaid, born January 28, a whopping eight pounds. Don't you love the one-eyed jack look? Congratulations to all of us, but especially to Jenn and Eric and sibs, Maile, Holland, Ella, and Caroline.